NY Daily NewsThe bodies of two men and a women are removed after they were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide in an apartment on 93rd St.

Ruiz was found shot in a chair in the apartment, Silver had been shot in the face and torso, and Lower East Side resident Tedlie had been shot in the torso, police said.

The bodies were discovered shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday, police Sgt. Kevin Hayes said. He said a semiautomatic gun was found nearby.

Police did not give details of the shooting or say who fired the gun. It also was unclear when the three had been shot. A call to the medical examiner today was not immediately returned.

One of Silver's neighbors, William Glenn, said his wife heard popping noises Friday night but thought nothing of it.

A visibly distraught woman arrived at the building and left with police around 8 p.m. Saturday; a man who arrived with her said they were relatives when reporters asked.

Detectives were talking to residents of the West 93rd Street building, a 10-story co-op with a doorman and decorative wrought-iron doors on a quiet residential block. A man answering the phone at the building's office declined to comment and hung up.

"It's a pretty good block," said Alice Cruz, an area resident who was among a small crowd of onlookers gathered outside the building Saturday night. "You get it (violence) even in the best neighborhoods."

Neighbors on Hawthorne Avenue in Glen Ridge, where Ruiz lived with his family in a two-story, yellow frame house surrounded by a white picket fence, were dismayed at the news.

"It's absolutely a shock, a surprise. He was a very good guy," said Mike Frew, 29, who used to live across the street from Ruiz and said he was back this weekend from Pennsylvania to attend a wedding. Frew said the mild-mannered Ruiz was into archery and was an avid hunter.

Another neighbor, Lisa Dickinson, said she has lived in her house across the street from the Ruiz family for 39 years but that she did not know them well.

"It's kind of a 'hi and bye' neighborhood," Dickinson said, adding she would regularly see Ruiz and his wife, identified in voter rolls as Wendy, out tending their lawn.

Frew said the couple has two children, whom he and public records identified as Michael and Elizabeth.

About 4:15 p.m. today, police escorted a black BMW into the Ruiz driveway. The occupants of the car, a male driver and a woman, were relatives, according to authorities. They declined to identify the pair but said the family had no comment or information for the reporters and photographers assembled in front of the house.

About 6 p.m., Dickinson and her mother, Janet, brought bagels, croissants and fruit to the home, Dickinson said. Police officers took the food and delivered it to the family, who soon afterward left the house again in the BMW.